Chatbots Automate Conversations; Not Candidate Experience

In the world of recruitment, we need to be first and we need to be fast. We’re recruiting in a candidate-driven market that isn’t changing anytime soon, meaning candidates have more options and have greater control over their own recruitment process. As recruiters and employers, this means we need to work quickly to get to the best candidates first.

In this recruitment environment, AI and automation are playing a more elevated role than ever before. As studies reveal that a great candidate experience and better engagement systematically increase hire retention and quality of hire, chatbots have become in increasingly high demand.

But despite this increased use of chatbots, many are finding that they aren’t actually helping candidate experience.

Human Interaction is Important

Often, chatbots merely actas an automated pre-screening form which blocks a candidate from interacting with a recruiter and thus, defeats the purpose of why candidates want to chat with the recruiter. Chatbots may act like human recruiters, but they are missing a key factor in achieving a great candidate experience: humanity. Customer service and e-commerce may be completely dominated by live chat and chatbots, but , 83% of consumers still say they prefer dealing with human beings for customer service, according to a survey conducted by Accenture.

The truth is that candidates may be utilizing a chat feature for quick response times, but they’re still more interested in connecting with a human being than a bot. Despite these seemingly disparate ideas, we can leverage technology to facilitate an interaction that satisfies both desires.

Bots Don’t Have All the Answers that the Recruiter Does

According to research conducted by LinkedIn, nearly 4 in 5 candidates (78%) say the overall candidate experience they receive is an indicator of how a company values its people.
Here at FlashRecruit, we constantly hear potential buyers looking for chatbots to take the place of their recruiters, but it’s clearly not solving the whole problem. Chatbots can help drive efficiency with some automated screening, but that’s only one piece of the puzzle.

Dialogue Holes

Along with benefits of engaging multiple candidates at once and faster response times, chatbots can be programmed with dialogue and conversational cues to engage the candidate and help them navigate to the right spot of the career site. The programming is very simple, but so is the extent of their dialogue. In a recent FlashRecruit blog post, we illustrated a common conversation problem that chatbots have in the world of recruitment and how the technology isn’t advanced enough (yet) to meet the needs of candidates without the help of a live recruiter picking up the conversation. As we all know, some candidate questions will always require the “human touch”.

Losing the Left Field Candidates

“I know he doesn’t quite fit the spec, but he’s had other experience that you’re going to love!”
Great recruiters aren’t just looking for candidates who fit the exact requirements. They’re looking for candidates with different skills and experience profiles that can be just as successful in the position as those qualified: the left field candidate. This is a type of candidate whose resume would never pass through a chatbot because they don’t quite fit the requirements the chatbot is programmed to screen. The ability to look at a left field candidate and provide a strong rationale for consideration is a huge reason why recruiting will always require the human element and can’t be left to chatbots alone.

Building Relationships with Passive Candidates

The biggest source for candidates in this tight candidate-driven market is passive candidates already in the workforce. Most of the job seekers you’ll encounter aren’t actively looking; they’re comfortable, but open to a conversation if a job is interesting. Building relationships with potential candidates is increasingly more important. People will always value a relationship and prefer to work with people they trust. It’s as simple as having a conversation before presenting the recruitment pitch. A chatbot doesn’t have that capacity to start conversations outside of what they’re programmed to do, so they can’t build a relationship with a candidate who’s simply curious about a position.

How to Leverage Chatbots Effectively

Chatbots are needed in the recruitment space, but they’re damaging the candidate experience if used without additional human interaction. FlashRecruit has built our live messaging tool with the candidate and recruiter in mind. Candidates want fast responses, and FlashRecruit has an intelligent screening bot that can be programmed for every chat bubble that appears on your website—whether it’s on your main career site or on each job posting. The intelligent screening bot immediately engages with the candidate based on the questions set and sends the responses provided to the recruiter(s) attached to that chat. The recruiter can then accept the chat to answer the candidates questions or decline with an immediate response to the candidate to explain why they did not fit the bill for a continued conversation.

Integrating Chat with Bullhorn

FlashRecruit is proud to be a Bullhorn Marketplace partner. With the Bullhorn integration, your candidates are automatically populated in Bullhorn post-chat to keep record of everything that was discussed in the chat as well as additional information that the intelligent screening bot took note of. For instance, if you programmed the bot to ask for a resume, the resume that was uploaded into the FlashRecruit platform is then sent to the profile created in Bullhorn. That candidate will then appear as a new candidate profile as well as be listed as an applicant for the position they inquired about with the click of a button.

ChatBots certainly play an important role in the recruiting process. The key is to understand where and how they fit within your business and process. On their own, there is the risk that you will negatively impact the candidate experience, but combining technology and the human touch is paramount. FlashRecruit was built as a proven balance between automation of chat and connecting candidates to the right recruiter; so candidates can get their questions answered and recruiters can streamline the recruitment process.

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Jonathan Novich

SVP of Product and Salesforce

Jonathan Novich is SVP of Product and Salesforce for Bullhorn, the global leader in CRM and operations software for the recruitment industry. A staffing technology innovator, he has developed broad and deep product and technical experience consulting to staffing firms over the past 15 years. Jonathan has acted as an independent consultant for some of the largest staffing companies in the world and advised companies on acquisition targets.
At Bullhorn, he oversees product initiatives as more than 10,000 staffing companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to drive sales, build relationships, and power their recruitment processes from end to end. He graduated with honors from Princeton University, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Computer Science and a certificate in Operations Research.

Ed Holmes

SVP, Workforce & Revenue Cloud

As Bullhorn’s SVP of Workforce & Revenue Cloud, Ed drives the company’s middle office strategy and overall product offering. Ed joined Bullhorn as part of the Peoplenet acquisition where he spent 7 years as the President/CEO leading up to the acquisition in late 2017. Prior to joining the Bullhorn family, Ed has spent his career designing, building and managing technology solutions for numerous Fortune 500 companies. He has been a Partner in an ERP-focused consulting firm, a CIO for a global pharmaceutical company, a supply-chain leader for a retail company and the leader of a services company from its inception to $50MM in revenue. Ed was born in Florida but has spent the last 20+ years in Atlanta, GA. Ed loves to play golf, tennis and basketball and occasionally gets out kite boarding when the wind is just right.

Ed holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

Brian Sylvester

CFO

Brian Sylvester is Bullhorn’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with more than 15 years of financial leadership experience. Brian leads Bullhorn’s financial, accounting, and legal functions. Prior to becoming CFO, Brian spent three years at Bullhorn in various finance & accounting roles. Prior to Bullhorn, Brian was Corporate Controller at Pegasystems, a global provider of business process management software where he scaled the finance organization during a period of 2.5x revenue growth. Brian began his career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in their technology audit practice.

Brian is a CPA in Massachusetts, has a Master’s of Science in Accounting from Boston College and a Bachelor’s of Science in Accounting from Bryant University.

Tamsyn Attiwell

SVP, Customer Success

As the Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Tamsyn leads Bullhorn’s Services and Customer Success teams. She is responsible for the successful delivery of all products and services globally and is committed to creating and maintaining incredible long-term customer experiences in the Candidate to Cash process. Tamsyn has been delivering implementations for over 25 years with companies such as SAP, Ariba, Zuora and Apttus: specializing in HR, Payroll, Procurement and Quote To Cash capability. She trained as a software engineer after studying Maths, Statistics, and Computing in England.

Art Papas

Founder & CEO

Art Papas is the Founder and CEO of Bullhorn, Inc, the global leader in software for the staffing & recruitment industry. Art was the original architect of Bullhorn’s flagship Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, which now helps more than 8,000 companies around the world run their businesses. Art is the Chairman of the Board at Career Collaborative, an organization that teaches unemployed and underemployed adults how to build careers that change lives and strengthen families. In 2014, Ernst & Young named Art an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award Winner in New England. Prior to starting Bullhorn, Art started his career as a software engineer at Thomson Reuters. Art is a graduate of Tufts University, holding a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics.

Matt Fischer

President and Chief Technology Officer

As President and CTO, Matt leads Bullhorn’s architectural, technical, and software design and development efforts. He also directs the product management team’s work defining product strategy, and global customer support and success. Since joining Bullhorn in 2004, Matt has held a variety of leadership positions managing the growth of various technical and services teams, including Vice President of Professional Services. Prior to Bullhorn, Matt worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in systems process assurance for such companies as Fidelity and State Street Global Advisors. Matt holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from Boston University’s School of Management.

Mike Restivo

Chief Revenue Officer

As Bullhorn’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mike drives the company’s global revenue growth. Mike was one of the first 15 team members of Bullhorn Inc. in Boston and relocated to London in 2010 to start up the International team. In his 6 years in London, Mike drove regional expansion into the Netherlands, Germany, Singapore, and Australia. He has supplied cloud-based solutions to recruitment consultancies in over 50 different countries worldwide for the past 10 years. Mike was born and raised in the Boston-area where he grew up an avid sport fan. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Business Management from Babson College.

Kristin Machacek Leary

Chief People Officer

Kristin oversees Bullhorn’s human resources function in her role as Chief People Officer. Kristin joined Bullhorn in 2020 and is responsible for helping Bullhorn scale to the next level, build leadership capacity, and accelerate growth in global markets. Kristin brings to the role over 20 years of experience leading high-potential companies through breakthrough growth and brings a depth of knowledge in organizational design, scalable processes, and flexible systems culled from some of the most successful global companies in the world. Leary joins Bullhorn from Hitachi Vantara, where she served as Chief Human Resources Officer, and before that she worked as Chief Human Resources Officer at Forcepoint, a private equity-backed company with 3,000 employees operating in more than 45 countries. She has also worked at high-growth enterprise technology companies like Alphatec Spine, Boston Scientific, and Hewlett-Packard.

Peter Linas

Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International

Peter oversees Bullhorn’s international operations across EMEA and APAC in his role as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and International. Peter joined Bullhorn in 2009 and was responsible for its highly successful UK launch. In addition to growing the international team to over 50 staff and establishing Bullhorn as the UK’s market leading recruitment software in fewer than three years, Peter has expanded Bullhorn’s reach into EMEA and APAC and achieved a user base of more than 10,000 international users. Prior to taking on the launch of Bullhorn in the UK, Peter spent 20 years working in the recruitment industry and held a number of senior director roles before moving into the technology space.

Ryan Murphy

Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce

Ryan Murphy is the Executive Vice President of Enterprise and Salesforce. He began his 10-year career at Bullhorn as a finance and sales intern, affording him a 360-degree view of the software-as-a-service industry and Bullhorn’s business model. Prior to his current role, Ryan served as an Enterprise Account Executive where he honed his customer-first leadership style and championed Bullhorn’s offerings to its most strategic clients. Today, Murphy is charged with leading the enterprise strategy and go to market for both Bullhorn and Bullhorn for Salesforce, enabling customers to maximize their investments on both platforms and deliver an incredible experience to their customers and candidates. Ryan has a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration from Boston University.